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Sunday, January 13, 2013

ETMOOC, A Course for Educational Technology and Media Starts Tomorrow

Over the past few months, I have been working with a small group of educators in Minnesota, exploring the possibility of creating a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for teachers in Minnesota this summer. It started with Byron, Minnesota Tech Director, Jen Hegna tweeting out the idea, and I jumped on board, attending a both virtual and face to face planning meetings.

We're still in the initial stages, but our hope is to combine the efforts of many people who are conducting online professional development for staff, crowd-source it a bit, combine the best ideas and create a learning experience that will provide teachers with good content and learning, as well as connect them to a broader community. Here is our planning document.I attempted a MOOC last fall, participating in a course through Stanford University on Designing New Learning Environments. Unfortunately, projects at work, the need for sleep, and the fact that I didn't have a lot of skin in the game, meant that it slipped on my priority list, and I did not complete it.

Then last week, I saw some buzz about a new MOOC course, created by Alec Couros from the University of Regina. The Educational Technology and Media MOOC (ETMOOC) will be an opportunity for me to connect globally with colleagues who are involved with Educational Technology in a more formal way than the informal Twitter and blog posts I read and share, and in a more extended format than during a one or two day conference. I met Couros a few years ago, when I attended the Educon Conference in Philadelphia, and I am excited for the opportunity to learn from/with him! This course has been defined as a "connectivist, network based" MOOC, and I will be asked to form, declare and maintain a learning identity. To that end, I joined the ETMOOC Google+ Community, I will be tweeting with the #ETMOOC hashtag, and blogging here about the experience.

I hope the experience will give me some ideas I can take back to my district as we move forward with our eLearning2 initiative, as well as the professional development I provide for staff. I look forward to our learning journey!